Eva and the Hidden Diary by Judi Curtin Page A

dad to watch.’
    ‘I can only imagine,’ said Georgina. ‘His precious darling boy was changed beyond all recognition.’
    ‘Did he get better?’ I asked. Even though I had no idea how this story had anything to do with Jean-Marc Lavelle, I couldn’t help being interested.
    ‘I’m afraid he didn’t get better,’ said Georgina. ‘As the months passed, things got even worse. Henry began to wander the roads at night,knocking on the doors of strange houses, and scaring people half to death.’
    At last I began to get an inkling of where this story was going.
    ‘And then one night, Henry came home with a big cut on his hand,’ continued Georgina. ‘George asked where he’d been, but couldn’t get any sense out of him – Henry never remembered anything about his night-time rambles.’
    ‘How awful,’ said Mum.
    ‘And the next day George heard that the church in Newtown had been ransacked, and that the valuable chalice had been stolen,’ said Georgina.
    ‘Henry did it?’ I breathed. ‘It was Henry who stole the chalice?’
    Georgina sighed. ‘The chalice has never been found, and we’ll never know who took it. All I know is that George believed his son was guilty, and that was enough to set the terrible series of events into motion. George was terrified thathis favourite child would be thrown into jail, and in his delicate emotional state, that would have been a tragedy.’
    ‘So George made up the whole story about seeing Jean-Marc Lavelle coming out of the church carrying the chalice?’ I said.
    ‘So the police would stop investigating, before the trail led to Henry?’ said Kate.
    ‘And because George was respected in the neighbourhood, he knew people would believe him,’ I said. ‘Poor Jean-Marc never stood a chance.’
    Georgina nodded and for a minute no one said anything.
    ‘Don’t judge my grandfather too harshly,’ said Georgina in the end.  ‘Clearly, what he did was wrong, but you have to remember, he did it to save his own son. Parents will sometimes go to any lengths to protect their children.’
    I looked at my mum, wondering how far she’d go to save me. She looked away, and I guessedshe was thinking the same thing.
    ‘I’ve got another question,’ said Kate. ‘Of all the people in the area, why did George pick on poor Daisy’s dad? What did Jean-Marc ever do to George or to his son?’
    ‘Was it just because Jean-Marc was French?’ I asked.
    ‘Well, yes and no,’ said Georgina. ‘My grandfather was a well-travelled man. He didn’t have the same bad feelings towards outsiders that many people had in those days. But you’re correct – he didn’t pick Jean-Marc at random. He thought very carefully about it. He told me that he had hoped that Jean-Marc would just get a slap on the wrist from the judge. He thought that Jean-Marc and his family would be sent off to France to live. France is a wonderful country, so that wouldn’t have been a tragedy.’
    ‘I’m not sure France was so wonderful in 1947,’ said Mum. ‘It must have been a mess after the war.’
    ‘And what about the life Jean-Marc had made for himself in Seacove?’ asked Kate. ‘Was he just supposed to walk away from that? Seacove is a wonderful place too, you know.’
    ‘That’s not the way things turned out anyway,’ I said. ‘Jean-Marc didn’t get a chance to walk away from anything.’
    ‘No,’ said Georgina. ‘George’s plan was completely misguided. He lived an isolated life in his big house. He didn’t understand how upset people were at the theft of the chalice. Unfortunately, by the time he realised that Jean-Marc was going to jail, things had gone too far, and George didn’t know how to fix them.’
    ‘He could have told the truth!’ I said angrily. ‘He could have made things right – it’s never too late to do that, remember? If George had come forward and told the truth, Jean-Marc would have been released from prison. Florrie would never have ended up in the psychiatric